Novelists From The United States

"It was then that he had gotten the idea to invite journalists, but not just any journalists: travel writers. Sparky Harper and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce adored travel writers because travel writers never wrote stories about street crime, water pollution, fish kills, beach erosion, refugees, AIDS epidemics, nuclear accidents, cocaine smugglers, gun-runners, or race riots. Once in a while, a daring travel writer would mention one of these subjects in passing, but strictly in the context of a minor setback from which South Florida was pluckily rebounding. (Chapter 26)"

"B.D. Harper had not risen to the pinnacle of his profession by making enemies. His mission, in fact, had been quite the opposite: to make as many friends as possible and offend no one. Harper had been good at this. He positively excreted congeniality. (Chapter 3)"

"Most opinion columnists start out as street reporters, an experience vital to understanding how things really work as opposed to how they should. My own approach to the column — drawn from the incomparable , and others — was simple: If what I wrote wasn’t pissing off somebody, I probably wasn’t doing my job. Take a sharp-edged stand on any issue, and the other side seethes. Show me a columnist who doesn’t get hate mail, and I’ll show you someone who’s writing about the pesky worms on his tomato plants."

"I'm sort of fascinated by America's fascination with rednecks, the whole Duck Dynasty thing. Being a white guy from the South, I find it amazing that so many TV viewers are enchanted by beards, bad dentistry and moonshine accents. Also there’s this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions."

"Eons ago, when man lived in caves, dumb moves were often fatal moves. The quick and the smart survived, the slow and the dimwitted didn't. If one member of the tribe ate a berry and died, the others henceforth avoided those darn berries. Over time, humans advanced and grew sturdier. Not anymore. Now we've got seat belts, air bags, antibiotics and stomach pumps to save fools from their own mistakes. That's all right. Caring for others is one of the nobler traits of our species. The result, ironically, is that the genetic future of mankind isn't so rosy. Stragglers once culled from the herd now (in the absence of saber-toothed tigers) operate motor vehicles, watch Jerry Springer, cavort in pollution and even breed. Darwin would be truly worried. The evolutionary gap between the bacteria and us is closing."

"Local newscasts aired the pollution warnings for days, and displayed detailed maps showing which areas were unsafe for swimming. By dawn's early light on July 4, it was reasonable to assume that almost everybody was aware of the problem, and had relocated their picnic plans to a safe beach. Out of fairness, though, let's say a few sheltered souls remained clueless. Perhaps they didn't have a TV or radio. Fair enough. You pile the family into the car and head across the Rickenbacker Causeway. You park along Hobie Beach, unload the coolers, smear on the sunscreen, dash for the water … and there it is. A sign. DANGER, it says, in English and Spanish. Don't swim here. The water's contaminated! Now comes the moment of truth. You can almost hear Darwin's ghost. Surely these morons aren't going swimming in THAT crap! Not with their kids! Not with a warning sign right in front of their face! Wrong, Charlie baby."

"A Ph.D. in microbiology is not necessary to grasp the concept: Clean water is good. Poopy water is bad."

"Scientists are advancing a theory that human beings have stopped evolving because we've interfered with natural selection. Thousands of years ago, the fittest of the species endured, while the weakest stumbled into tar pits or got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. That doesn't happen much anymore, and consequently—these experts assert—humans are actually devolving, getting dumber and less fit. The hypothesis is bolstered by the popularity of daytime talk shows and psychic hotlines. More empirical evidence is supplied every Fourth of July, when alcohol and explosives are freely distributed among the populace."

"I try not to stand on a soapbox and scream. That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All my humor comes from anger. Satire is terrific therapy. Making people laugh is a joy, but making them think about something serious is the ultimate reward."

"He has a wonderful ear for dialogue."

""'The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.' That's from Emerson, by the way. All I was hoping to do is stretch some goddamn minds." (Epilogue)"

""I know you're not a stupid person, so why would you ask such a stunningly stupid question?" (Chapter 28)"

""Okay, Angie, just to be clear," Ryscamp said, clearing his throat, "you're telling me the crazy old f**k fed LSD to a twenty-four-foot killer python?" "Look, I know you guys don't train for situations like this..." "There's never been a situation like this!" (Chapter 27)"

"Angie tried not to think much about politics. It didn't seem to matter who was in power. Nothing got better in the besieged, breathtaking world she cared about most. The Everglades would never be the lush, unbroken river it once was; the shallows of Florida Bay would never be as pure and sparkling with fish; the bleached, dying reefs of the Keys would never bloom back to life. Being overrun and exploited was the historical fate of places so rare and beautiful. Every year, Angie diligently wrote checks to the Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, but she was too much of a loner to jump into the fray. No meetings, no rallies, no Facebook petitions. Never once had she fired off an angry letter to a congressman or a county commissioner. Sometimes she wondered if she was too cynical or just too lazy. The sitting President of the United States was a soulless imbecile who hated the outdoors, but in Angie's view, at this point Teddy Roosevelt himself couldn't turn the tide if he came back from the dead. All the treasured wilderness that had been sacrificed at the altar of growth was gone for all time. More disappeared every day. Nothing ever changed, except the speed of destruction, and only because there were fewer pristine pieces to sell off, carve up, and pave. (Chapter 24)"

"Ryskamp stared up at the constellations and took a long, quiet breath. "Okay. What about the First Lady? She weighs a hundred and twenty-one pounds." "The python would have to be exceptionally large and hungry," Angie explained, "and the First Lady would have to be exceptionally unlucky. These things aren't like Rottweilers. You can't train 'em to seek and attack." She smiled grimly. "Can you guys believe this f**ked-up conversation?" (Chapter 18)"

"Mockingbird sometimes found it hard to believe this was the same man she'd married. He looked like a different person now, as if someone had put a fire hose up his ass and inflated him with meringue. His ego seemed to have swollen proportionately. It wasn't that long ago when she'd fallen hard for him. Now he was a raging, gaseous oaf. Gone was any trace of the sly charm and tenderness. In their early years, he could actually laugh at himself, but Mockingbird couldn't recall the last time she'd seen an honest smile on his face. (Chapter 17)"

""You think he could be right about this Diego kid being involved in the old woman's death?" Ryskamp looked up with a rueful smile. "Don't you get it? It doesn't f**king matter whether he's right or not. That's the scary part." (Chapter 10)"

"At first she had disliked the code name chosen for her by the Secret Service. Then she'd watched a YouTube video about actual mockingbirds, which were crafty, graceful, and melodious. Like me, she thought. Once upon a time. The President's Secret Service code name was "Mastodon." He loved it. "Perfect!" he'd boomed when he was told. "Fearless, smart, and tough!" And enormous, she'd said to herself. Don't forget f**king enormous. On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his Chief of Staff to arrange a trip to the National Zoo for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The Chief of Staff wasn't brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the Zoo's beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about "those snotty Kiwis" and soon gotten sidetracked by another daft notion. (Chapter 5)"

"She fell asleep anticipating another enigmatic dream. Tonight's feature starred the Commander-in-Chief himself. Angie had been summoned to Casa Bellicosa to unfasten a screech owl from the Presidential pompadour, which the low-swooping raptor had mistaken for a roadkill fox. When Angie arrived, the Commander-in-Chief was lurching madly around the helipad, bellowing and clawing at the Velcro skullcap into which the confused bird had embedded its talons. The owl was still clutching a plug of melon-colored fibers when Angie freed it. Swiftly she was led to a windowless room and made to sign a document stating she'd never set foot on the property or glimpsed the President without his hair. A man wearing a Confederate colonel's uniform and a red baseball cap stepped forward and hung a milk chocolate medal around Angie's neck, after which she was escorted at sword point out the gates. She awoke with renewed certainty that Carl Jung was full of shit. (Chapter 2)"

"Buck stared at this degenerate ambassador for his own popularity, wondering how many other Brethren fans were homicidal, nut-job stalkers. Maybe it's time to quit the show and go fishin, he thought for the first time since Blister had removed his handcuffs. Dump the family. Move into the condo with Miracle. He wasn't sure how much money he had in the bank--five, six million bucks? Krystal would grab half, but so be it. An unhurried, unexamined existence looked pretty sweet to Buck--a life free from soggy collard greens, rooster shit, and all those f**king TV cameras in his face. (Chapter 19)"

"For all its daring, the plan was also laughably, fatally absurd. Later his mother would tell reporters that it proved she was right about living downwind from the paper mills. All those toxic vapors obviously stewed poor Benny's brain cells. A goddamn squirrel had more sense. (Chapter 19)"

"The show's producers had strategically cultivated a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance clan, and those who identified with it. Each week, the writers strived to portray the brothers on a social bandwidth halfway between harmless rednecks and odious white trash. It was a precarious tightwire. (Chapter 14)"

"The pilot episode of Bayou Brethren was a major disappointment, the visual appeal of high-def hog shit having been seriously overestimated by a network vice president who was summarily promoted to a more harmless position. The new network vice president in charge of the project felt the brothers needed a more esoteric vocation, to distract from their unappealing personalities, a view shared by potential advertisers who'd screened the off-putting pilot. (Chapter 1)"

""Lady, do I look like a bleeping babysitter?" "He nearly died." "Yeah, because he's a fool. There's no known cure for that." (Chapter 6)"

"Raven sighed to herself. She was accustomed to working around Derek's enormous ego, but there were times when she felt like reminding him that he was basically a tap dancer, not a grizzled woodsman. (Chapter 3)"

"It would have been understandable for a mother at that moment to stare at her spoiled, hapless offspring and doubt herself, or at least feel hobbled with remorse. Yet long ago Janet Bunterman had willingly accepted the role of her daughter's primary enabler, exploiter, and apologist, reasoning that such duties were better handled within the family. The fact that the whole pathetic clan was financially dependent on Cherry was the galvanizing force behind her mother's devotion, though Janet Bunterman preferred a more noble rationalization. Even though Cherry didn't write her own lyrics, and the vocals were shamelessly overdubbed, her music still brought happiness to millions of loyal young fans. It was them for whom Janet Bunterman imagined herself sacrificing so tirelessly. (Chapter 16)"

""Please don't grow up to be one of those men who lie for the sport of it, and most men do. That's a fact... That's why the world is so messed-up, Noah. That's why history books are full of so much heartache and tragedy. Politicians, dictators, kings, phony-baloney preachers--most of 'em are men, and most of 'em lie like rugs. Don't you dare grow up to be like that."(Chapter 3)"

"Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren't sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. (Chapter 6)"

"It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other. (Chapter 5)"

"Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default. Medical school had been his first goal--specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the notion of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing x-rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation." (Chapter 5)"

"The dog proved to be as dumb and stubborn as a mud fence, so Stranahan had named him Strom. (Chapter 2)"

"At heart Chaz Perrone was irrefutably a cheat and a maggot, but he had always shunned violence as dutifully as a Quaker elder. Nobody who knew him, including his few friends, would have imagined him capable of homicide. Chaz himself was somewhat amazed that he'd gone through with it. (Chapter 2)"

"Admiring the silken calfskin sheaths, Chaz felt a knot of remorse in his gut. It passed momentarily, like acid reflux. (Chapter 1)"

"Even up to the twentieth century, some primitive tribes had only two number words: one and two." . . . footnote: "Here I use the word "primative" to describe the condition of the tribe's culture and not to describe the physical attributes of its members. All human beings alive today are modern Homo sapiens sapiens."

"Linde’s jurisprudence sparked a national movement to revive judges’ interest in the constitutions of American states. State courts, Linde said, should construe their state’s constitution first before diving into the Supreme Court’s federal case law; a state constitutional text might make a federal ruling unnecessary. Linde left the bench nearly two decades ago, but his “first things first” approach lives on. Perhaps the most important legacy of the Linde years were his opinions interpreting Oregon’s free-speech guarantee much more broadly than the federal First Amendment. That protection has helped preserve Oregon’s wide-open democratic culture, where ideas from the Neanderthal to the utopian can contend, and where human experience comes in many shades. That very culture, I suspect, is what has drawn out-of-state fascist leaders to focus on Portland. From years of study—and personal experience—I know about Oregon’s dark racist past and the shadow it casts over the state today. Nonetheless, in recent years, leaders here have worked to create an inclusive culture—one that the fascists would like to discredit, stigmatize, and eventually destroy."

"Since the Saturday demonstration, the Proud Boys have announced that they will be back every month until the City suppresses the antifa movement, whom they call “domestic terrorists.” The impudence is striking. The Proud Boys are threatening violence to achieve political change. That is the textbook definition of terrorism. Moreover, even before Charlottesville, domestic terrorism had emerged as a danger from people motivated by the far-right ideology—that is, from the political forces (if not the actual individuals) now demanding that the government crush their enemies so that they can own the streets. Consider a very partial list of horrendous crimes motivated by right-wing racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism: a mass killing at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina; pipe bombs sent to public figures who oppose Donald Trump; a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue; and 20 people—mostly Latino—gunned down at an El Paso Walmart."

"If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to a man you loved opened them for one you didn't moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming"

"I haven’t seen Justice Hans Linde in more than a decade, but I thought of him last Saturday, when I found myself locked in a science museum with frightened parents and children while thugs marched by. Hans was a child in Weimar Germany; I suspect he would have known how I was feeling. The museum was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, in Portland. The occasion was a rally organized by the , an all-male group that exalts “Western values” and promotes Islamophobia. Other affiliated groups joined in—a loose conglomeration of racists, chauvinists, and just plain thugs. Some of them were connected to the in , two years ago, at which a marcher drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman named . The Proud Boys aren’t from Portland, but they have selected the Rose City as the site for their rallies, threats, and clashes with local “antifa,” or activists. The rally Saturday was nominally to demand that Portland suppress the antifa groups so that the Proud Boys can march unopposed whenever they choose. [...] What has this to do with Hans Linde? Hans was born in 1924 to a prosperous Jewish family in Berlin. He once told me that his first clear memory was of watching from the family apartment while Nazis in brown shirts brawled with Communists on the below. When Jewish life in Germany became untenable, the Lindes relocated to Denmark, and then, by good fortune, obtained U.S. visas. The Lindes settled in Portland; Hans attended Oregon public schools, and then Reed College, in the city’s Eastmoreland neighborhood. He served in the Army, attended law school at UC Berkeley, and began a brilliant career as a U.S. Supreme Court clerk, a Senate aide, a law professor, and finally the greatest justice ever to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court. I came to know Linde because, many years ago, I wrote a profile of him."

"Joe constantly points out that Trump started his campaign with racism, riding down the escalator, attacking Mexicans. Joe thinks this illustrates a difference. Ronald Reagan also started his presidential campaign with racism. He chose to make his kick-off speech in the heart of the Solid South, in Mississippi, quite near where three civil rights workers had been murdered. He said, "I believe in states' rights." It was the biggest dog whistle of the day, code for segregation, and the crowd cheered. He continued: "... we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." It had been the Republican Party that had tried to impose integration after the Civil War. Reagan was making it clear that his party was completely divorcing itself from Lincoln's vision. It was not a one-off. Reagan ran against the "" and against "the strapping bucks" who stood in front of you at the supermarket, buying steaks with food stamps, while you made do with hamburger helper, earned by the honest sweat of your brow. It was a brilliant strategy that turned government programmes into handouts to minorities with money stolen - through taxes - from good white people. It was called the . Reagan did not invent it. But he sold it with warmth, charm, and a smile."

"What he brought to the presidency that was really original was making up stories and never being embarrassed that they were not true. He made up a tale about a mysterious stranger who gave the Founding Fathers the courage to sign the Declaration of Independence. He loved the tale of a bomber pilot who decided not to parachute from his shot-up plane in order to stay and comfort a wounded member of his crew as they plunged to the ground and received the Congressional Medal of Honor ... posthumously ... and told it often, although it had only happened in a movie. He said that he had been present at the liberation of a concentration camp during World War II, though he had never left Hollywood. It used to be that being caught in a lie harmed your credibility, but Reagan, for the most part, got away with it. In doing so he set a new standard that opened the tarnished road that Trump rides down on today."

"Trump may be vulgar, Trump may be abrasive, but in terms of racism, corruption, and destruction, he is Mr Reagan's true heir. Trump's Republican Party is what it has been at least since the 1980s, only more so."

"President Abraham Lincoln died more than 150 years ago. The "" was so enraged at him for beating them in the Civil War and at his party for ending slavery that they voted Democrat for the next 100 years. Then the Democrats started supporting civil rights for . The Republicans saw the opportunity, courted them and flipped them. The Solid South is now theirs. It has been a long time since the Republican Party has been "the party of Lincoln". Let us put that aside. Is the GOP still the "party of Reagan"? Oh, very much so. And I was recently reminded exactly how much while re-reading a book I wrote during his presidency back in the 1980s: "You Get What You Pay For". As I flipped through the pages, I found myself saying, over and over again, "that's just like Trump"."

"The mark of a civilized man was to know when to leave the party."

"The end, in this case, would justify the means. It did that, sometimes. But somewhere along the way he had lost his godlike surety; he had had to think instead of feel, and the monkey brain was never as quiet as the zen mind."

"“Confounders aren’t allowed in holding cells, Envoy—” “And if snakes had legs, they’d be lizards,” Massey said. “Let’s not discuss things that don’t apply to our situation, Lojtnant.”"

"She didn’t have to play Pen’s game, she didn’t want to. The problem, as always with Pen, lay in figuring out what his game was."

"“I mean, look, I just broke into your private files. If I were you, I’d be more than a little upset.” Pen crinkled. “I’m not. It shows initiative.”"

"He was a frustrated romantic, a thing often mistaken for skepticism."

"A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how. To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable."

"Honor was in surviving, not fair play."